Out Through the Attic (13 page)

“So … uh … where’s the head? This morning’s coffee is looking to make a getaway.”

Without opening his eyes, Lasater pointed towards the door. “You’ll find a pair of ‘em fore and aft, one pair just around the corner from our cabin, and the other all the way back past where we got on board, just this side of the dining cabin.”

“Much obliged,” the cowboy said and stood up.

“And remember to put the seat down when you’re finished.” He punctuated the directive with a chuckle. “There’s proper women-folk on this crate, and we wouldn’t want to offend their delicate sensibilities, would we?”

The cowboy let out a guffaw. “Don’t you worry. I’ll be sure to tidy the place up for ‘em.” The cabin door closed on their laughter, and Lasater folded his arms in his lap. After a few minutes he dozed off into a light, dreamless sleep.

It was the cabin door opening that woke him up, but he didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t even open his eyes when he heard footsteps come in and approach him. When he heard the second set come through the door, he opened his eyes and his right hand was already moving towards his pistol, but it was too late.

In the span of a heartbeat, three things happened. First, Lasater spotted Hang Ah in a black, coat-tailed jacket over a red paisley vest, the ensemble topped by smoldering eyes shadowed under a short bowler hat the same color as the jacket. Hang held a long dagger in his hand that was closing in on Lasater’s face. Second, a shuriken thrown by the man behind Hang hit Lasater in the right arm, and the poison that coated it instantly paralyzed his arm, causing the limb to drop down uselessly at his side. Then, as he reached with his left hand for the pistol on that side, another shuriken hit home and his left dropped motionless to his lap. By that time the dagger was inches from his face, and he could even see small nicks and scratches in the polished steel.

Lasater looked down at both motionless arms and shook his head. “I was hoping I’d seen the last of you, Hang,” he said calmly. His breath fogged the blade as he spoke. “I figured friends could walk away from a mess like that and just go their separate ways. Guess I figured wrong.”

Hang spoke quietly, his accent making it that much more difficult for Lasater to understand. “Honor must come before friendship, Mr. Lasater. So, yes, you did.” Hang’s eyes narrowed down to slits. “
Gravely
.”

Lasater nodded his head and tried to fix an ‘I’ve learned the wickedness of my ways’ look on his face. Then he slowly leaned sideways and awkwardly adjusted his position so that his back was against the seat cushion rather than the outward-facing wall. The dagger maintained its inches-away position, keeping pace with Lasater’s good eye, but Hang did not otherwise hinder his prey. “So, umm … what happens next?” Lasater asked. He tried to rub his itchy nose on his shoulder, but he couldn’t quite put the two together with the numbing poison in his arm. When Hang made no move to help him, he wiggled his nose like a rabbit sniffing to try and make the itch go away. The motion did at least prompt a reaction from Hang and the assassin standing silently behind him. They both got subtle smiles as they watched Lasater suffer.

“What happens next, you ask?” Hang finally replied. His smirk turned to a beaming smile of pure delight. “Why, we wait.” Although the dagger never moved, the rest of Hang’s body appeared to relax a little, and the assassin’s shoulders actually lowered slightly as he leaned back on his heels. “Are you familiar with the ancient Chinese proverb on patience?”

Lasater’s features drifted into a desert of sardonic boredom. “Can’t say that I’m familiar with any Chinese proverbs, Hang. Why don’t you enlighten me?”

Hang’s tone took on a taint of formality, like he was quoting scripture. “One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may also ruin an entire life.”

“Hunh….” Lasater blinked his eyes a few times, not really getting where Hang was going with it. “That’s really interesting and all, but I think you lost me there.”

“What I find interesting is that the reverse is also true.”

Lasater drew out his response, as if he were talking to a lunatic, “Right….” Before he could add anything, the cabin door opened and the cowboy stepped in.

“Run for it!” Lasater shouted, trying to warn the man off. Lasater was the only one in the room who was surprised.

“Why would I want to do that?” the cowboy asked as he closed the door quietly behind him.

Lasater felt the bottom of his stomach drop out. He wanted to kick himself for not seeing it coming. He was normally such a good judge of character, but he clearly missed the mark with the cowboy.

“So you sold me out, did you?” Lasater accused through gritted teeth.

“It certainly appears that way, don’t it?” the cowboy replied like he was talking about the weather. He stepped past the Chinese assassin, and just as he was behind Hang, he winked at Lasater with a serious look on his face. “Guess it’s like them Buffalo Soldiers you was talking about before … this old Buffalo’s gonna be your undoing.” The cowboy put his back to the windows and faced the assassin. “You catch my drift, mister?”

Lasater looked at the cowboy with steely eyes. “I believe I do. You know how I hate them Buffalos. You go right ahead and do what you gotta do.” Then he turned his face and stared down the Chinese Tong boss who held the dagger. “You sure you don’t want to rethink this, Hang? Last chance.” Hang and the assassin chuckled at the impertinence of a man about to die. “Well, Hang, I guess this is it.” And then Lasater did something that actually widened Hang’s eyes with surprise. Despite the poison, despite the dagger, despite being outnumbered three to one … he smiled, and it was a mean, bloodthirsty smile. It shook Hang, if only for a moment, and the Tong leader licked his lips and swallowed.

The kick from the cowboy hit the assassin square in the balls and lifted him up off the floor a couple of feet. The boot took the wind out of the little killer with a grunt of pained air blowing out of his lungs. Lasater’s left hand flashed in a motion too fast to follow, the gears of his artificial left arm screaming like the peal of a falcon, and it wrapped a leather glove around Hang’s dagger-hand and squeezed.
Hard
. The cowboy was grabbing the assassin before he came down and pushing him towards the open window with a twist of his body. Hang yelped like a little girl as the bones in his hand were crushed against the steel hilt of the dagger. He tried to thrust, but his hand moved forward only a fraction of an inch. With Lasater’s shoulder against the wall, Hang would have had to push like an ox to get Lasater’s arm to give way. The assassin went sailing quietly out the open window, still gasping for air.

It was Lasater’s turn with smoldering eyes. “I gave you every opportunity to walk away from this, Hang. Bent over backwards to do it. But I’m not spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for red pajamas.
Good bye.
”

Lasater tightened his hand, the gears within protesting at the resistance, and then all three men left in the cabin heard Hang’s fingers snap, pop and crack like kindling as they were crushed to splinters. Hang screamed, his face contorting into agony and his other hand coming around to grip the broken one. Lasater released the crushed, useless fingers, and the dagger slipped through them and stuck in the floor, point down. His hand darted to Hang’s begging throat, and he squeezed there too, popping Hang’s eyes out as the air was cut off and blood started to swell in his now-crimson face. Lasater stood up, lifting Hang clear of the ground, and with a twist, he flung Hang’s flailing body out the window to sail screaming through the clear air down into a rushing river hundreds of feet below. They never heard him hit.

With an annoyed look on his face, Lasater pulled the shuriken stuck in his right arm out and tossed it out the window. Then he slowly sat down and ran his hand over the numb, lifeless dangle of his right arm, hoping that he’d be able to use it soon and the that poison didn’t have more in store for him. He let out a long, resigned sigh. “Damn it, Hang. I thought we were friends.”

The cowboy sat down across from Lasater, reached out slowly and pulled the shuriken from Lasater’s left arm. He had to tug quite a bit, and it finally came free, but he looked at Lasater with the unspoken question painted across his face.

“Rubber,” Lasater replied. “Over brass. It feels more natural when I brush up against people, but not by much. Is that how you knew? When we got on the zeppelin?”

“Yep … figured it was something like that.” The cowboy leaned back and smiled, waiting for the next question.

“So, they paid you to set me up, did they?” Lasater asked, a bit of irritation creeping into his voice.

“Yep.” The cowboy’s smile was broad enough to get a horse through.

“And you telegraphed from San Jose?”

“Yep.” His smile grew to deliberately infuriating.

“You get paid up front?” Lasater asked without taking the cowboy’s bait.

The cowboy’s face took on a more serious shape. “Half, but I figured it paid in full from the beginning.”

“How do you figure?”

“Better to see ‘em coming when ya got help than not see ‘em comin’ at all.” The infuriating smile was back.

Realization dawned on Lasater’s face. “So you set
them
up.”

“Yep.” The cowboy’s features softened into one of camaraderie, the kind that only the minority can share amidst a majority. “I figured if you were able to make your way out of that hole back at Hang’s, well this would be no trouble at all if you had just a little bit of a leg-up.”

“That’s a damn good point,” Lasater said, smiling. He paused for a bit and then added with narrowed eyes, “And you didn’t mention all this before because …?”

“I didn’t want to scare ya.” The cowboy grinned like the devil himself.

Lasater sighed. “Next time … go ahead and scare me,” he suggested a bit tiredly.

“Actually, when I sent the telegraph to them from San Jose, I didn’t really know what sort of fella you were. If you’d turned out to be a Reb at heart, well I’da maybe just turned my back and let you fend for yourself. I never did get your full name.”

“Lasater. Jake Lasater, outa’ Missouri.”

“Montgomery McJunkins,” the cowboy said. “New Mexico. But my friends just call me Cole—don’t ask why.” Cole paused and stared down at Jake’s left arm. “That’s quite a left you got there, Jake.”

“Yep. I’m lucky I got it. It’s got me outa’ more fixes than I care to think about. Where you headed, Cole?”

Cole smiled at the use of the friendly moniker. “Colorado. Figuring to try my luck on the other side of the Rockies.”

“Poker?”

“Yep. Had my fill of mahjong … and San Fran.”

“First beer’s on me, Cole.”

CAP’N PLAT AND
TH
E WRATH OF CA
AN

Originally appeared in Penny Dread Tales v.3 from RuneWright Publishing in March of, 2013.

Captain Angios D. Plat tapped a gray-furred finger upon the side of his platypus bill. He waited alone in his usual booth nestled in the back of the White Gull Inn. A half-tankard of grog lay before him, a gravy-smeared, pewter plate pushed to the side. He hated waiting.

The Gull was a favorite of the more successful Captains and crew who called the port city of Hamerheim their home. They were successful in that they’d been able to avoid getting arrested by the Raelish navy for trafficking in whatever happened to be illegal that day or, more frequently, happened to catch the fancy of the Commander making the search and subsequent, undocumented seizure.

The room was full of such sailors—privateers like Plat, mostly—a menagerie of faces. He could see a few canines, two large equines and two porcines, with an assortment of tortoises and amphibians—the sea being a strong draw to the more aquatic species.

Such was the clientele of the Gull, sailors seeking their fortunes upon the high seas, constantly wary of the looming shadow cast by the tyrannical Raelish Empire. Plat was the only platypus in Hamerheim, and he prided himself on being one of the few of his kind to leave his home in distant, southern waters.

The other privateers, their crews, even many of the people of Hamerheim, knew him as a gregarious and frequently generous character. Few ever saw him doing anything but smiling and laughing and living as well as his means allowed, despite the oppression of the Empire that everyone endured. But on this night worry ate at him like crabs feeding on a beached corpse.

“Dimont, where the devil are you?” he asked quietly.

Lana, one of the tavern maids, appeared at his elbow, picked up the plate, and winked at him, suggesting a tryst later in the evening when most of the drunken sods had either passed out or stumbled back to their ships. “Can I get you anything else, Cap’n,” she said suggestively, leaning in close enough for him to smell a delicate, musky perfume that always stirred his nethers.

The thought of disappearing under Lana’s bloomers and ravaging the delights nestled between her striped, furry legs was almost enough for him to stop worrying about Dimont. Almost. He’d trysted with most of the tavern maids … more than a few times, in fact … but Lana was his favorite. There was just something about felines that floated his keel. And a tabby? Just thinking about it gave him a delightful shiver.

“Nothing right now, Lana,” he said, winking back. “Perhaps I’ll be needin’ somethin’ from you later this evening … after Dimont shows up.”

With a smile and a swish of her dress that gave him a glimpse of truly magnificent bloomers, she turned and sashayed back to the bar. Her long tail slithered left and right amongst the other sailors in the tavern, brushing gently—and deliberately—along the faces of every salty sea dog that turned an eye towards her swaying retreat. Captain Plat wasn’t the only sailor who had an appetite for tabby, apparently.

Plat watched as Lana placed his dirty plate under the bar and turned, handing some small delicacy to the bar’s mascot Clive. Clive was a large seagull who normally perched in the window behind the bar, but he’d hopped upon Lana’s shoulder, stretching his neck and inviting her to scratch his throat.

Clive let out a delighted
SQUAAAAWK
and then rubbed his head under her chin. “
Love Lana
,” the bird said in a gravelly but understandable voice. Plat wasn’t overly fond of seagulls, pests that they normally were to sailors, but Clive was a smart little bugger, even helping around the bar by gathering up dirty silverware, napkins and such—anything he could pick up.